Armin van Buuren stood, eyes closed, arms outstretched at a music console, in front of 10,000 screaming fans at Mumbai’s Turf Club. Under the huge LED panels, psychedelic lasers and thundering speakers, he hoisted an Indian flag atop his shoulders and the crowd went wild. The skinny Dutch superstar had landed in India four hours earlier from a festival in Kuala Lumpur; four hours later, he would leave for Miami for another gig. His signature property, ‘A State of Trance’, showcases local and international support acts as it tours the world. But at that hour, on a balmy evening in March, the fans, in their 20s and 30s, had paid Rs 3,000 to Rs 10,000 to see van Buuren perform. And he was there to make Mumbai dance.
Electronic Dance Music (EDM)—made up of genres like House, Trance, Dubstep and Drum & Bass—has become globally mainstream relatively recently and has taken India’s young, affluent urban populations by storm. In 2013, the Swedish House Mafia, Armin van Buuren and DJ Tiesto—arguably the three biggest names in the EDM scene—have all played their tracks at sell-out concerts in Indian cities. The top DJs all produce their own music. And if you think you haven’t heard or danced to their tunes, think again. “Go to any wedding these days and Avicii’s ‘Levels’ is always one that gets kids, aunties and everyone in between onto the dance floor,” says Nikhil Chinapa, whose company Submerge books and manages artistes when they come to India. A TV personality and a top DJ himself, Chinapa has seen electronic music in India grow from Bollywood remixes in the mid-2000s to today’s thriving nightclub scene that’s penetrating cities like Bhopal and Indore.
Electronic music has managed to do what other music genres could not: Tap into the potential of the Indian market and make money. Some 18,000 tickets were sold for the Swedish House Mafia concert in Mumbai in January at an average of Rs 4,000. Compare that to rapper Snoop Dogg’s concerts in Delhi and Pune where about 1,000 tickets sold, at an average of Rs 2,500. Sunburn, the three-day year-end music festival organised by Percept in Goa, is Asia’s largest. Sunburn Arena events with DJ Tiesto, Armin van Buuren and Swedish House Mafia sell 2,000 VIP tickets (at upwards of Rs 5,000 each); in contrast, when Guns N’ Roses came to India recently, 2,500 people showed up. Indeed, seven of India’s 10 biggest music concerts are EDM gigs: Tiesto pulled in more people than Carlos Santana.
Hermit Sethi, director-operations at Submerge, says that these arena events run up revenues of anywhere between Rs 3 crore and Rs 5 crore per city, or Rs 10 crore to Rs 15 crore for a tour. According to him, the live music market in India is valued at Rs 100 crore to Rs 150 crore a year, by expenditure.
For those who haven’t heard electronic music, the tracks are created on computers using sound samplers, synthesisers and mixing programs. A DJ’s skill is in putting together sounds in new patterns and layering them in ways audiences haven’t heard before—and doing it live, playing off the audience’s response to what he tries. As important as the music are the lights, speakers, pyrotechnics, C02 jets and the co-ordination between them. Revellers go to dance music events for the overall experience. Van Buuren, for instance, has such a fan following because he builds up such a frenzy as he tweaks the music and syncs it with the lasers, that young men and women forget everything and dance. It’s a very tribal, largely lyric-free kind of music whose sole purpose is to get crowds moving.
And move they do. Whether it’s at nightclubs or at concerts and festivals, EDM has made dancing socially cool for young people, especially men. They come to these events to express themselves physically and let off steam. Young urban men rarely have this opportunity outside of the sporting arena. Stand on the arena floor from 4 pm to 10 pm and you will get a fair workout too.
The day tickets for January’s Swedish House Mafia concert in Mumbai went on sale, they sold out the maximum allowed number of 8,000 tickets in just six hours; they had to increase the cap and sold 18,000 overall. Bear in mind that these tickets sold for Rs 4,000; over a thousand VIP passes went for Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 for a postponed gig, on a Tuesday evening!
(This story appears in the 24 January, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Its a fantastic news for the country.
on Apr 8, 2015It's really great to see EDM in India... i hope it grows more and i would love to visit one of EDM Concerts here...
on Nov 19, 2014Really that\'s good to see making it to mainstream india and raw EDM also gets love in subcontinent.
on Jan 8, 2015Which is best dj academy in mumbai which can give me chance to oprate in foreign. plez help me
on Apr 16, 2014thres no dj academy as such, what ill suggest is that instead of searching for a dj academy, try various online resources. They would give you a huge variety of options as to what music do you want to choose, and a even more bigger exposure at a very small fee. One of the worlds most premiere dj\'ing competitons is the \"burn residency\" , and fo it, all of the sound submissions and the initial selections happens online so you might as well check that out.
on Apr 29, 2014